"A Nation’s Unity" by Ayn Rand

Ladies and gentlemen, every four years at about this time, we begin to hear louder and louder appeals for national unity. We hear them between presidential elections as well, particularly when something is about to be put over on us, though they are uttered in a more perfunctory manner. Observe, however, that in recent years it has become fashionable to disparage unity between elections and to praise dissent as a kind of moral or patriotic duty. But the pattern of a presidential election remains the same. First, there is a campaign in which the candidates denounce each other and seem to appeal to some sort of unstated principles. Then, when the election is over, the appeals become in effect. Now let's forget all about principles. National unity comes first. This is therefore an appropriate time to examine the issue of national unity and to ask certain questions. Is such unity necessary? Is it possible? What makes it possible? What is the alternative? What are the consequences? The present election campaign offers many clues to the answers. As in the case of many other errors or evils, today's appeals for national unity are based on a perverted element of truth. It is true that in order to exist as a nation, the large number of men who live in the same geographical area and deal with one another must agree on some fundamental principle or principles, and more. Any two men who choose to deal with each other must have some sort of basic agreement, at least for the duration of their joint action. If you join forces with another man in order to lift a heavy boulder, and you strain to lift it while he strained to push it down, nothing would come of both your efforts but failure. Frustration. And if the issue were important enough to both of you, the recourse to blows and mutual extermination, the fact that in case of disagreement, man can resort to physical force, that is, to human destruction, is the reason why every human association is based on some sort of agreement which is implemented by certain rules of conduct. An agreement in this context does not necessarily mean a common purpose. You may make an agreement with a neighbor that you will not attack him so long as he does not attack you. And if both of you are by bait, you are free to go your own ways and perhaps never see each other again. The fundamental agreement which is required of a nation is an agreement on the rules of peaceful coexistence. A territory inhabited by men engaged in perpetual conflicts, chronic fighting, physical violence, and general hatred of all. All for all is not a nation nor a country, but a bloody mess. Internal peace and some sort of harmony are the precondition of the existence of a nation. The big questions, however, Are peace at what price? Harmony, on what terms, Agreement about what and more? Can such terms and agreements be chosen arbitrarily? Can men choose any terms and make them work simply by wishing them to do so? Or are there objective factors which necessitate certain principles of human association and defeat all others? In sum, the fundamental social question is, what principle should men agree upon in order to live and deal with one another? The best way to answer questions of this kind is to start not with an enormous floating abstraction such as society as a whole, but with one member of society, the one you know best yourself. Ask yourself what rules of conduct would you be able and willing to accept in order to deal with your neighbors? Let us say you are a young man who knows that he must work in order to support his life. You have a good job, a small family and a home in the suburbs. Since you do not intend to stagnate, you maintain a certain financial and intellectual balance between the present and the future. You budget your money and your time, your money to provide for your present needs and to improve your standard of living. For example, to pay off the mortgage on your home, your time to do your present job well and to study in order to qualify for a better one. You like some of your neighbors and you dislike others, but you are not afraid of any of them. They are not a threat to you, nor you to them. This is the normal pattern of your life, and you take it for granted as if it were a fact of nature. But it is not. It took thousands and thousands of years to achieve it. Let us see what it depends on. Suppose this country's political system was changed. It was decided that the affairs of each community are to be determined at a monthly meeting of all its citizens by general democratic vote, and that the role of the majority is absolute, without limits or appeal. It would mean that you could be thrown out of your home and out of your community if the majority so voted.

It would mean that you could be.

Sentenced to die if not liking your manners or your ideas. The majority so voted. This is not fantasy. This was the social system of many Greek city states. Pure democracy, unlimited majority rule. Would you agree to accept it in the name of communal unity?

No.

Then would you agree to accept it on a much larger scale and by remote control? Suppose it was decided, but never announced, openly and explicitly, that the nation holds the absolute power of a Greek city state. But since one cannot convene an entire nation to a monthly meeting, the people are compressed into groups representing various interests, and the government acts as arbiter and ruler who listens to their clashing demands and enforces the will of those it deems to be representative of the public interest. These groups are not elected. They are formed informally, spontaneously, democratically. Anyone is free to form them and to clamor demands for anything. How will you adjust to it? First there is a business lobby, but you don't mind it. It helps your boss. Then there is a labor lobby, but you don't mind it. It helps you. Then there is a farm lobby, but you don't notice it. It's too remote from your activities.

Then a neighbor on the next block.

Forms a group demanding better roads. And two blocks further a woman forms a group demanding better schools. Another group demands free lunches for all school children. And a rival group demands free textbooks. Your windows are smashed one night by the group of the local juvenile delinquent or problem adolescent. They show non negotiable demands which you cannot quite untangle, but you gather it has something to do with youth power. The residents of the local old folks home form a group demanding senior citizen power.

The old maid file clerk at the.

Office, whom you can't stand because she can't keep the file straight, is given a promotion with the help of a group that demands the liberation of women. You have no time to keep track of it all. You notice only that your taxes keep rising and rising and your money keeps buying less and less. You are late getting to the office one morning because the local welfare recipients group lies stretched out across the highway demanding a yearly income greater than half of yours. You swam on the brakes just in time to avoid running over the group's leader, a lady known as Spetzel, Allegedly known as speto, who has 12 children and no visible husband. You had planned to have three children, but you decide to wait a little for that third one. You cannot afford him. A long haired young man forms a group to forbid anyone to have more than two children. And a short haired young woman forms a group to forbid abortions and the use of contraceptives. There's a group that demands a display of sexual intercourse on the screen. And another group that demands censorship of old movies above the intellectual level of a six year old. So you give up going to the movies. You fall behind in your mortgage payments, but your property taxes keep rising and rising. You consider giving up your house and renting one in a new development five miles away. But the local birdwatchers group is suing the developer, demanding that the land he cleared be turned into a public park. Your boss has promised you A promotion. The job of managing the new branch factory he is planning to build in your district. But he does not build it. The lady who used to head the local poetry club now has a group that demands the preservation of the beautiful swamp he was going to fill. Then, an educational group decrees that you cannot send your children to the local school, which so much of your property taxes has gone to pay for. So your children are bused to a distant town. A daily trip of two hours going there and another two hours coming back. This, you are told, will achieve racial integration. You had never thought of it before, but you become race conscious and try to untangle your own ancestry. You. You find it so mixed that you cannot qualify for any of the groups into which your community is placed. The Afro Americans, the Chicano Americans, the Italo Americans, the Jewish Americans, the Irish Americans, et cetera. And you. You are just a mongrel. So am I. A title of which you would have been proud at one time, but which is becoming dangerous. If you lose your job, there will be no preferential quota to help you get another one, and no way of knowing how many ethnic applicants will be pushed ahead of you. There will be no preferential quota for your son's admission to a college when the time comes. You are alone, unprotected, defenseless. And the only reason you know that you are living in a human society and not on a desert island is the fact that your taxes keep rising and rising. How do you adjust to whom and to what? The first thing to go is your future. You can barely keep up with your current expenses. You have no way to plan ahead. If you try to save, you do not know which demand or which groups will eat up your savings in the form of new taxes and higher prices. Why study to develop your skills? You do not know whether you will ever get a better job or what new obstacles will spring up overnight, or whether there will be anyone left to hire you. You used to plan your course in terms of years. The range of your concern shrinks to one year, then to one month, and then to next. Payday. You can see nothing beyond but a black boy. Strange things happen to a man without a future. You begin to act like the type of man you had once despised. You become sloppy at your job. You can barely summon the effort just to get by. You get drunk too often. You buy a luxurious lawn mower which you have no time to use. And you quarrel with your wife over the expensive cut of lamb chops she bought for dinner. And when you hear a seedy Lecturer at a group meeting declares, the Horatio Alger stories are a myth that a man cannot rise by individual effort and ability. You applaud defiantly and belligerently, oh yes, you have joined a group. You have joined several groups. You do not know exactly what they stand for, but they talk of community action and mutual protection, and they denounce other groups. You do not know clearly which ones or why. You have tried to get it clear but gave up. Every time you read a newspaper or listen to the snarling voices on television, things grow murkier. You do not know by what steps your attitude toward your neighbors has changed. You have begun to watch them suspiciously. Whenever you see two of them in a heated discussion or observe several cars parked in front of a house, you feel a touch of anxiety. You do not know what they might be up to, what new group might be formed, and what it will do to you. You learn to feel fear. You are afraid of your neighbors, of any human being. You are afraid to speak. You smile and you agree with everyone you meet. You are afraid to think. One day you discover that what you feel for men is hatred. In rare moments you wonder what has happened to your neighbors. There were decent people once, you remember vaguely. They did not act like wild packs scrambling to get at one another's throats and pockets. You do not know how many of them are wondering the same thing about you. You know only that there was a time when the local bird watcher and the problem adolescent and the poetry club ladies and Miss Fatso were of no danger to anyone. But now they are. Why were they better in the past, if someone answered because they did not have a gun, you would not understand it. You have come to believe that people are no good and that force is the only practical way to deal with them, since reason, they all tell you, has failed. You cannot cope with the enormous complexity of an entire nation's problems. You have no way of knowing, you conclude, who is right or wrong. So let some groups force others and re establish orders. No one has explained to you that the golden rule applies to politics. If certain conditions of social existence are unacceptable and unbearable to you, you cannot expect others to accept them and make them work. And what these conditions do to you, they do to society as a whole. Do you agree with to accept a social system of this kind? It is, of course, the system under which we are living today, but which we have never chosen. It is important to consider it now, because in the coming presidential election one of the candidates is asking us to agree. And in the Name of national unity Explicitly to accept the principle that society has an unlimited power and that our lives belong to the state. Among many other issues which he exemplifies, George McGovern offers us a clear example of the fact that, paradoxically enough, statism is incompatible with national unity. If by unity we mean man's peaceful coexistence. Supposing for a moment that one wanted to unite with McGovern and support his programs. Which McGovern and which programs would one join, Since both keep switching every few weeks? It is bad enough if a president changes his policies while in office, as Mr. Nixon did. But a man who cannot hold a steady set of convictions for the three months of an election campaign. Makes Mr. Nixon look like the Rock of Gibraltar. At the moment, McGovern is trying to justify himself by declaring in television advertisements that a man should not be afraid to change his mind. True enough, but not as a chronic policy. And not if he is a presidential candidate who demands an unprecedented power, the total power to dispose of our incomes and. And therefore of our lives. Yes, he is free to change his mind. But what does this do to the minds of his followers? Obviously, what he expects of them is not the agreement, the unity that comes from reasoned convictions, but faith in him. That is unthinking obedience. This is a simple example of the connection between man's mind and his rights. Those who refuse to recognize individual rights are necessarily obliged to seek to destroy individual intelligence. How else would they obtain unthinking obedience? The goose stepping automatons of Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia. Are not the exponents of a nation's unity, but of a nation's death. There are two crucial problems in human relationships. And the issue of national unity depends on their proper solution. The factor of force and the factor of time. The first involves the realm of criminals and despots. The second involves the realm of man's mind as a being of rational, that is, conceptual consciousness. Man is unable to live like an animal on the range of the immediate moment. He is unable to live exclusively in the present. Some projection of the future, no matter how primitive, Is a necessity of his mental and physical survival. If you point to the hippies with their now slogans as evidence to the contrary, I shall frame them as evidence to support my contention. Observe their epidemic of drug addiction, which is an attempt to escape from an unbearable mental state. Man lives by means of projecting the future, that is, projecting goals and taking the actions necessary to achieve them. This is a process enacted in time. And it requires the conviction that the Goal will remain achievable. If a primitive savage spends days or months hewing a stone weapon, it is because he knows that he needs it to hunt with. If a primitive settler spends most of the year tilling the soil and planting, it is because he knows that it is necessary in order to collect the harvest. Both know that their success is not guaranteed, that some calamity of nature may defeat their effort. But they know that they can learn to deal with nature, and that nature gives them a chance to get the product of their hunting or planting. What men do not know and have not learned fully to this day is whether they will be able to keep their product once they get them. The problem of human predators is as old as recorded history or older. When men learned to hunt or to plant, some men learned to avoid that effort to seize the products of others by force. The early forms of human associations, such as primitive tribes, were prompted in large part by the need for self protection against the attacks of human enemies. With the tribal ruler as the chief warrior, how to organize protection against the use of force was and is men's fundamental social problem. What has to be protected is man's time, time free from forcible interference with the process of production and of its goal, consumption. Without self protection, men would be unable to produce or to survive. The need for organized protection against force is the root of the need for a government in the history of Western civilization. The period known as the Dark Ages after the fall of the Roman Empire was a period when Western Europe existed without any social organization beyond chance. Local groupings clustered around small villages, large castles, and remnants of various traditions, swept periodically by massive barbarian invasions, warring rubber bands, and sundry local looters. It was as close to a state of pure anarchy as man could come. The feudal system grew out of the need for organized protection. The system, in essence, consisted in the peasants swearing allegiance to a lord who claimed ownership of the land and the percentage of their harvest in exchange for his duty to protect them against military attacks. This system brought some semblance of order, but no protection and no peace. These armed men were left in the total power of an armed ruler who had his own military gang and who robbed them as ruthlessly as, but more systematically than any foreign invader. The history of the Middle Ages is a series of internal and external wars. There were various lords struggling to enlarge their domains, foreign lords struggling to subjugate neighboring lands, and bloody, hopeless uprisings of desperate peasants bloodily suppressed. It was also the longest period of stagnation. Intellectually and productively in Europe's history. The Renaissance was the great reverse. Intellectually, but not politically. Still, seeking order and unity, man attempted to solve the problem of feudal tyranny by replacing many small tyrants with a single big one. This was the birth of modern absolute monarchies. The rule of force continued externally and internally. Externally, it took the form of perpetual wars among various monarchs seeking to conquer the kingdoms of other monarchs. Internally, bloody terror as a way of life was moved, in effect, to society's upper levels. This is not to say that the people as a whole were exempt. The people were crushed in the Serbum of hopeless toil and helpless obedience. But those who declare today that force is the only way to deal with men, with the unstated footnote that they, the speakers, would be safe in the position of rulers, ought to take a careful look at the history of absolute monarchies and of modern dictatorships as well. Under the rule of force, it is the rulers who are in greatest danger who live and die in permanent terror. The court intrigues the plot through counterplots. The coup d', etat, the known executions and secret assassinations are a matter of record. So are the purges of party leaders and their cliques in Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia. National unity, peace and harmony among men. If the history of animals were recorded, the most ferocious species would not equal the carnage perpetrated by men when they choose force as their means of dealing with one another. It is in this context, from the perspective of the bloody millennia of mankind's history, that I want you to look at the birth of a miracle. The United States of America. If it is ever proper for men to kneel, we should kneel when we read the Declaration of Independence. The concept of individual rights is so prodigious a piece of political thinking that few men grasp it fully. And 200 years have not been enough for other countries to understand it. But this is the concept to which we owe our lives, the concept which made it possible for us to bring into reality everything of value that any of us did or will achieve or experience. This is the key and the only key to the problem of national unity. If men seek peaceful coexistence, they must accept the principle that every man has rights which other men may not infringe, that he has the right to exist for his own self faith and to pursue his own happiness, that he is an end in himself, not the means to the ends of others, not of any others, big or small, strong or weak, neither as canon father nor as unrewarded drone toiling to support the feudal lord or the king, or the emperor, or the children of welfare recipients. I shall not repeat here what rights are, how to define them, and how to implement them. I refer you to my book, Capitalism the Unknown Ideal. I shall merely remind you that the only rule of conduct men must accept if they wish to achieve peaceful coexistence is the rule that none may initiate the use of physical force against others. The rest is a matter of consistent implementation, the first step of which is to delegate to the government the right to use force in retaliation, and only in retaliation. This is necessary in order to take the homicidal power force out of the reach of human whims and human irrationality and place it under the control of objective laws. Benevolence is incompatible with fear. It is only when a man knows that his neighbors have no power forcibly to interfere with his life that he can have feel benevolence towards them and they toward him. As the history of the American people has demonstrated, the freest people on earth was the most benevolent and the most generous, fearlessly and innocently too generous. Since agreement on the principle of individual rights does not impose any official dogma and does not violate anyone's convictions, the greatest variety of youth and ideas could coexist peacefully in the same country without threatening anyone. If two men disagreed, they were free not to deal with each other and neither could force his choices on the other. Incidentally, this applied even to the man who refuses to respect individual rights, that is the criminal. If he chose to initiate the use of force, he was answered on the terms he had chosen, that is by force. The recognition of individual rights is the only proper principle of human coexistence because it rests on man's nature, that is the nature and requirements of a conceptual consciousness. Man gains enormous values from dealing with other men. Living in a human society is his proper way of life, but only on certain conditions. Man is not a lone wolf and he is not a social animal. He is a contractual animal. He has to plan his life long range, make his own choices and deal with other men by voluntary agreement. And he has to be able to rely on their observance of the agreements they entered. National unity, like love, is not a primary but a consequence and must come voluntarily or not at all. Just as one cannot order a child to love his mother, and if one does, one will make him hate her, so one cannot order or urge a nation to unite. When a politician demands for unity, violate your conviction, when he claims that unity supersedes your judgment, when he urges you to support policies which you oppose, to participate in actions you regard as evil, to join your own destroyers, or to leap into a sacrificial furnace, all in the name of national unity, then pretends Hypocrisy, corruption, hatred and national disintegration will be the only results. It is the last remnants of the principle of individual rights, and therefore any remnants of national unity that George McGovern is avowedly out to destroy. While some. Some of his followers were demanding an unearned annual income of $6,500 for welfare recipients, McGovern was advocating a proposal which he was later obliged to change. That all income above $12,000 a year be expropriated. This meant that the best, the ablest, the most hard working, the most productive Americans Would be left with less than double the income and standard of living of welfare recipients. Such a proposal is the confession of a mentality totally devoid of the concept of individual rights and of justice. As to his concept of national unity, it was McGovern who rerolled his Democratic country convention rules, which enabled his voice to stack the delegations by means of preferential quotas given to some minority pressure groups. Not all pressure groups, only those that agreed with his views. He was helped by the ideological weakness of the other candidates. And by a gang of sundry young manipulators, power lusters and hippies who publicized themselves as a grassroots movement. He seized the nomination by crudely, ruthlessly divisive tactics. Denouncing, insulting and shoving aside all the established factions of the Democratic party. Then, when he found that his grassroots turned out to be weed roots, That the country was not receptive to his campaign, he came begging his own victims to help him in the name of party unity. It is hard to say who lacked integrity more shamefully McGovern or Humphrey, Muskie, and even sad little Eagleton, who were dragged out to campaign for a man they had good reason to despise. This. This is the kind of unity McGovern hopes to extort from the nation. As a political candidate, George McGovern is a fiction, like concretization of certain abstractions. He is the perfect embodiment of the soul of modern American intellectuals. This is not to say that he is an intellectual, but neither are they. It is not an attractive soul, and he projects too many of its essential characteristics. Pretentiousness, uncertainty, inconsistency, borrowed notions and therefore contempt for ideas. A vacuum of values and feeling hidden under the trite of sentimentality. A patronizing attitude toward the people, a seizing hostility and above all, an enormous distance from reality. I offer in evidence the fact that the campaign, which had been announced as a crusade for momentous issues, for revolutionary change, for re establishing integrity and credibility in government, a crusade in the name of new politics, led by a candidate publicized as an idealist, started at the bottom of the old politics and went on down. No issues were raised or discussed except for a few evasive snatches. We have heard nothing but personal denunciations, insults, attacks and irresponsible smears. A smear is an accusation without particulars or proof. Such as the claim that the Nixon administration is, quote, the most corrupt in our history. A campaign dedicated to love has dissolved into shrieks of hatred and the worst kind of rabble arousing the attempt to arouse hatred for the rich. Is this the road to national unity? But McGovern has miscalculated. There is no rebel in America. Only the synthetic rebel imagined by the intellectuals and manufactured by the universe. Out of a small percentage of the students. The intellectual's and McGovern's view of the people is a measure of their distance from reality. They do not see a mark. They see a nation of helpless peasants and cruel, overbearing masters. And they long to play the role of overbearing but kindly masters. They have perceived nothing in the last 200 years. This is an example of philosophically induced blindness. The philosophy still guiding modern intellectuals is of the kind pre French Revolution era. Their souls are still in Europe. They have missed the achievements of two great men, Aristotle and Christopher Columbus. The patronizing attitude which regards the people as the masks. As helpless, whining, begging masses that plead for handouts from a benevolent ruler and wait for his permission to drag the rich to the guillotine is so dated that it would not work even in modern Europe. To preach that view in America is grotesque. The American people, including the poorest, have never regarded themselves themselves as humble mendicants waiting to be helped. Nor have they ever resented the rich and the successful. To most Americans, the successful are not objects of envy and hatred, but of inspiration.

An American worker properly identifies with his.

Boss, the industrialist, rather than with a welfare recipient. And I would venture to guess, so do many welfare recipients. Excepting the group organizers or the professional bums who see welfare as a way of life. Americans are men of action. They do not indulge in self care pity. And they do not accept passive resignation to suffering in the face of hardships or misfortunes. Their automatic response is to act, to fight, to solve the problem. An attitude for which they Are so frequently condemned by the mystics of the intellectual elite of European bar rooms and basements. To confront Americans with the patronizing kindness of a combined social worker and small time lord of the manor is such an impertinence that a landslide defeat is the least McGovern deserves for it. Here is the latest example of McGovern view of the people and of national unity as reported by the New York Times yesterday. McGovern stated, quote, let's face it, this election is more than a contest between George McGovern and Richard Nixon. It is a fundamental struggle between the little people of America and the big rich of America. Between the average working man or woman and a powerful elite. I read this to my husband and said there are no little people in America. He answered, well, there's George McGovern. It is obvious.

I'm sorry, I didn't hear it.

May I suggest the veteran. This young man or a question period later. You raise your hand, I'll recognize you.

You can put your question. It is obvious that McGovern had counted on hatred. On deliberately stimulating class hatred and hatred for each other. Nixon to unite the nation. It is revulsion against George McGovern that is uniting it now. Americans do not want any master rulers, kindly or otherwise. Nor do they want any redistribution of wealth. Americans are a future oriented people. It was not the socialistic rich, it was the workers who protested angrily against McGovern's proposal to expropriate inheritances. Men who may never save more than a few thousand dollars to leave to their children rebelled against the notion of forbidding multimillion dollar legacies. Do you think that this is optimistic self delusion? No, it is hard headed realism. Americans know the importance of having all doors and all roads kept open to them. McGovern and his intellectual supporters are obviously stunned and bewildered. They do not know which way to turn or how to explain the people's attitude. It seems incredible, but apparently there is thought that the people would follow them. Which shows what degree of isolation from reality they had reached in their tight little cliques, their in groups, their esoteric pads, their private establishments, their unintelligible sign language. After years of talking only to those who agreed with them, they came to believe that no one else existed and are now in a state of shock. A very revealing article by James Reston appeared in the New York Times September 10, 1972 under the title what kind of People are We? Candidates for the Presidency make certain assumptions about the condition of the nation and the world and particularly about what kind of people we are and what we think, or at least what we will swallow, close quote. The administration assumes, Mr. Aston points out bitterly that, quote, a majority of the people are fairly well off, close quote. And are opposed to McGovern's programs, quote. It would be difficult to prove that the President has misjudged the popular mood. Welfare, which used to be a symbol of America's compassion, is now regarded by many not only as an administrative mess, which it is, but almost as a racket in which money is taken from the people who work to support the people who won't work, close quote. Which is precisely what it is. What else is can it be, Mr. Aston doesn't say. And further indifference to the massacre of human life in Vietnam, provided it is not American lives, is not exactly the ideal that set the American nation apart as the most unselfish and compassionate society in history. But so far in this election, there has been remarkable little response to Mr. McGovern's argument that we should end the war, reform the tax structure, redistribute the wealth, reconcile the races and the generations, and cut the defense budget. And do all these things because unity and justice at home are essential to the spiritual and physical security of the nation, close quote. This is an unusually clear demonstration of the reason why altruism is incompatible with individual rights, with justice and with national unity. Altruism demands sacrificial victims. What sort of unity can one establish between victims and executioners? What sort of unity does Mr. Aston envision?

He demands that.

That we unite on a program to end the war by surrender, to reform the tax structure by guaranteeing unearned incomes for some people at the expense of others. To redistribute wealth by confiscation. To reconcile the races and the generations by preferential quotas. To cut the defense budget by relying on the goodwill of Soviet Russia. Such is the nature and the loathsome evil of altruism, which is now on public display in the form of a program that an unconscionable candidate has had the effrontery to offer to the American people. An obscure Balkan nation would not accept it. A pack of cornered rats would not accept it. But the altruists believed that the American people would. Mr. Preston is wrong when he declares that, quote. There has been remarkably little response to Mr. McGovern's arguments. Unless by response he means agreement. The response, as shown by the polls, has been overwhelming. It represents the American people's rejection of totalitarianism. The first time they got a clear smell of.

Would be unfair.

And even silly to indict the character of a people on the basis of the evidence in this campaign, says Mr. Reston, and proceeds to do it. Or rather, he struggles not to accept the fact that the American people could reject altruism, clearly implying that if they did, he would indict them. Quote the people, he declares, can't see his McGovern's ideals and his proposals for his blunders. Maybe they long for the unity and justice and change he wants. Close quote he then blames McGovern for having failed to present his ideals effectively, with the implication that if the people had understood those ideals, they would have leaped joyously into a global sacrificial furnace. Quote nevertheless, he declares, the main question remains. Even if he argued his ideals effectively, would the American people in their present mood respond? Close quote he is not too certain. I am no human beings can accept altruism fully and consciously, that is accept the role of sacrificial animals. The American people need. Their response to McGovern's program is a magnificent assertion of independence and self esteem. It is obvious that altruism is the intellectual's only hope and their only weapon. A rustic, blunted, bloody weapon. It is embarrassing to hear the maudlin sentimentality of all those skeptics and cynics when they attempt to deal with violence. Here is another sample from the Times, October 4, 1972. According to William B. Shannon, George McGovern has shown, quote, a candid, un neurotic friendly personality, close quote and is, quote, an experienced politician moving in the mainstream of the country, country's liberal traditions, close quote after trying lamely to justify McGovern's witches and compromises, Mr. Shannon declares, quote. But in any event, a political leader's programs are not like a builder's blueprints. Rather they are signposts on the road he hopes the country will travel. Through all the partisan smoke and clamor, Mr. McGovern signposts are perfectly clear. He would lead the way to an America of peace, compassion and concern for the hungry child and the ailing old person, for the overtaxed fed up worker on the assembly line and the hard pressed small farmer, for the malnourished Indian on the forgotten reservation and the unseen war orphan in a distant land. What about compassion and concern for those who seek happiness in life? When will they have time for it? But an altruist wouldn't know what I'm talking about. In another aspect of his statement, however, Mr. Shannon hints at a valid point. It is true that political programs today are not like blueprints, but more like signposts. In a mixed economy dominated by the philosophy of pragmatism, a political candidate does not dare proclaim clear cut principles. He has to pay lip service to the notions of every pressure group and to the opposite of his own convictions, if any. This means that we, the voters, have to learn the art of lip reading and make a choice, in effect, between two hypocrites by means of the signposts that indicate the nature of their hypocrisy as well as the road they actually want us to travel. This is not a procedure conducive to national unity, but at present we have no other. Well, by that criterion, both Mr. Nixon and Mr. McGovern are hypocrites. Both have paid tributes to Americanism, I.e. free enterprise, and to altruistic statism. But here is the difference between them. Mr. Nixon, though not a champion of free enterprise, yearns in that direction and does not mean his tributes to altruistic statism. Mr. McGovern does not mean his tributes to Americanism. In an alternative of this kind, there is only one choice for those who value individual rights. As you know, I am not an admirer of Mr. Nixon, but whatever his flaws, they are nothing when compared to his adversaries. Perfectly clear sign. It is against statism that we have to vote. It is statism that has to be defeated, and defeated resoundingly. The American people apparently understand this. Left without any guidance, any intellectual leadership, any conceptual understanding on the basis of nothing but their sense of life, they knew when to say no, loudly and clearly. Now more than ever, after this election, they will need the help of every honest, articulate person to translate their knowledge into firm, consistent conceptual terms. Because their sense of life is a magnificent foundation, but not a sufficient weapon to save the country. Now, more than ever, they will never A new philosophy. A year ago in this hall, I was asked whether I held any hope for the future of this country. I answered yes, and referred for my reasons, to the article I was then writing. It is called Don't Let It Go, and it was published in the Ayn rand letter of November 22 and December 6, 1971. I would like you to read it or re read it now. It dealt with the sense of life of the American people. In the present campaign, the American people have confirmed and surpassed my best hopes. If I were religious, which I am not, I would say God bless America. I am saying it anyway.

This contains the question and answer session which followed Ayn Rand's October 1972 Ford hall forum Talk A nation's unity.

May I say for the benefit of those who may be new to this audience and to these programs, the question period is conducted with great simplicity. I shall try to take a question or two from each section so as to cover the entire hall. When recognized, please stand so I can see you and then remember always you are the questioner. The speaker is on the platform. Question, please. Yes, I'd like to know, Mr. President.

Of the type of campaign.

This gentleman would like to know your opinion of the type of campaign which Mr. Nixon is conducting against Mr. McGovern.

As far as I know, it's not quite as forceful as I would have made it. But there have been. But surprisingly and properly, he has not compromised, nor me tooed if anything's the other way around. And for instance, the statement, I don't.

Know if you heard it, that was.

On television in New York and probably here too, a half hour speech by Governor Connally.

Former Governor Connally of Texas was one of the best campaign speeches so far.

So that I would say the campaign.

Is much better than the Republicans had done in the past.

It could have been much better.

Further question here. This lady.

Which of your achievements are you?

Of your achievements, which one are you proudest of?

I have never given it any thought. I don't measure it that way. But if you want me on the spur of the moment of having married Frank o'.

Connor.

What constitutes a sanction?

A sense sanction. Oh, sanction, yes.

In the dictionary definition it has two meanings. One is approval, support, sponsorship. The other one, sometimes used in international politics is almost the opposite. Like to invoke sanctions against the country.

Means a blockade or a breach of diplomatic relationship or of trade.

But the way I use the word sanction in a moral context is always.

In the sense of approval or sponsorship.

Question.

Up here, way up. I see a hand.

I would like to ask your opinion on one. If I lived alone in a desert island or in a forest, I might be worth one large capital. But in the US Today, since I am able to work with others, and since I am able to use capital accumulated by others before me, I can command quite an income. In what manner do you call or do you assert or do you believe that the taxation of this income is enough or that I have an eligible right to this income which are mine alone?

In what way do you undertake to believe or to argue that the taxation on income is obnoxious? And this gentleman uses as his basic principle the assumption that he lived in A desert and also in a forest. And through his. Built himself a cabin. And then he moves to the extremity of a bit of civilization. And he speaks about the fact that he has built a cabin and others have done likewise. And he has accumulated money, whether by inheritance or the rest. And he raises the question, by what right is this the fruit of his labors, to be subject to taxes?

I'm sorry if you haven't read Atlas.

Shrug, and I hate to recommend it. I'm sure it will not do you.

Any good, or you it.

Nevertheless, it's my duty to recommend it.

Because you will find an answer to your question. I'll give you just a brief one.

I would suggest that you check the premise whether left alone on a desert island, you would build a log cabin. If you use your mind in the manner you demonstrate in this question, namely by context dropping. Look, you would achieve no more on a desert island than you achieve in a free society. Because even though the material, the content of knowledge would be less, that knowledge in the most civilized society doesn't do you any good until your own mind has grasped it and then applied it. If you could build a log cabin on a desert island all by yourself, then in America you would probably build 10 skyscrapers, if that is the extent of your mind. But the people who come after you, no matter what knowledge you left them, will not be able to use use it at all unless they learn from you and then apply their knowledge by.

Their own independent work. That is the way in which we learn from past generation and teach future generations.

What does this mean? That the only moral inheritance that we.

Owe to those from whom we learn.

Is to use our mind and keep the society free, to let others mind, other minds use it as they did. By what earthly means or right?

The means.

I know the gun, but by what earthly right does a society, that is people who have not achieved anything and do not intend to, by what right would they seize anything above a log cabin? In today's civilization, let us say there is no right of taxation and there is no such thing as society. It is only men. The men who are entitled to their property is whatever they produce by their own thinking and effort and by contractual agreement with others, they are entitled to nothing else.

Altruism as impossibility or something that is undesirable.

As an unspeakable evil would be exact?

Yes.

It is an impossibility. If any naive man attempts voluntarily to practice, there is no such thing. However, it is a great possibility on the part of the executioners not the victims. For an innocent man or a victim who would like to practice altruism, it is not possible unless he leaps into the first pot where cannibals are cooking a dinner. So long as he lives, he is not an altruist. But just think of what the receiver.

Altruistic sacrifice can do.

Altruism is the only excuse used, the only justification used by every dictatorship, every tyranny, every despotism. Nazi Germany, Soviet Russia and today's American. I don't know what to call them, but they are not even liberals anymore. Every time you want something immoral, unearned and belonging to someone else, you try to invoke altruism. And in that way it is very possible. And the sea of blood in history.

Is the best demonstration of it.

This gentleman.

Wait a minute.

I have a simple philosopher question. Do you view the cognitive relation in terms of intentionality as such neocones as HD Beach B E A T H.

And I don't even know who he is, but I don't speak that kind of language. Intentionality. If you mean volition.

Yes, please, Ms. Rand, please. Now let's quiet down. I want you to put your question simply and don't seek an effect. Put it simply. You know what I mean. Now put it simply. I'm sure it is, but put it very simple. No, no, put it very simply. I know you're asking about the philosophy of Veach. What is the philosophy that Veach directs himself to so the audience can understand? I'll put it simply.

Thank you.

Put a question up here. Yes, way up, way up in the corner. All quiet, please. I can't hear you.

Do you think it is important to be politically involved? And if you do think how you.

Tend to change our politics and politicians.

Do you think that it is important to become politically involved? And if you do think so, how would you go about changing our politics and our politicians in the same.

On the first part of your question? No, I don't think it's important to be politically active today.

I think it is crucially important to vote. And whenever two candidates are more or less the same, then even that's not.

A duty if you can't make up your mind. But in an election like this time.

It is so clear cut, even if neither side fully admits it, that to the extent to which you want to.

Preserve your rights at all, you should vote. Now, how do I propose to change our politicians?

I really don't. Except to observe how they changed into what they are. So long as a country is Even semi free. The politicians are not its determining element.

They are what the electorate or public.

Opinion in effect makes them, or what.

They think public opinion wants of them. They have demonstrated that very clearly.

Therefore, before one can engage in politics.

One should engage in educational work. I have said that repeatedly.

What we need is an educational campaign aimed to spread a new philosophy to make people understand what are individual rights, why they are right, why altruism is wrong, and battle should be conducted by every person who is articulate at all.

If you understand your ideas, try to spread them to as many people as you, you can.

That is how public opinion changes and.

That will change politicians. But if you ask me about what.

Social institution is mainly as an institution.

The cause of our problems, I would.

Say the colleges and universities. If you want to reform any one institution, start there.

Because its philosophy that really determines the.

Culture, which determines the direction of a country. And philosophy is the specialty of the universities.

That's where it comes from.

That's who spreads it to every other profession.

So if you want a crusade, start with the colleges.

Further question of the episode. Have you heard of the Libertarian Party? Have you heard. Have you heard of the Liberation Party? Is that right? The what? Libertarian Party.

Look, I would rather vote for Bob Hope or the Marx Brothers if they still existed. Or Jerry Lewis. I don't know know who is the funniest today rather than something like Professor Hospers and the Libertarian Party. Look, I don't think Henry Wallace is a great thinker, but even he is.

Pretty much of a demagogue.

Though with some courage even he had the good sense to stay home this time. If he wanted to some extent, if he had one ounce on sincerity and.

Wanted some freedom for this country to.

Choose this year to start after personal publicity. And if half person, whoever the rest are, get 10 votes away from Nixon, which I doubt, but if they do, it is a moral crime. Not at a time like this. Who cares about Nixon personally and less about Haspers personally. This is not the time to engage in personal publicity seeking which all that type of rump crank political parties are engaging in. Publicity is all that they want to achieve and this is not the time for it. If they want to spread their ideas, do it by education, educational work. Don't run for president or even for Doug Catcher if you're going to help McGovern that way.

What was these very oppressive two candidates? I contradicted them.

One is contradicting communicate with respect, the.

Other one is not.

If we wanted to be 80 or.

40 or more contradicting himself.

How would he.

Which one would he be better?

The one would be more effective contradicting himself than he is now when start contradicting himself. Ladies and gentlemen, this gentleman suggests. And see if I've got it. This gentleman suggests that both candidates, Nixon and McGovern, have contradicted themselves. And he wonders how one knows who is the better one to vote for. When each one in turn has been self contradictory.

Well, I in effect answered that at.

The the last part of my speech.

Namely, in a mixed economy, you will.

Never get a fully consistent candidate. So everybody will be in part contradicting himself. So all that one can really do is observe the total of a political.

Figure'S speeches, policies, actions and decide what.

Does he really mean?

What is his main line?

What's the dominant line?

And then hope for the best. Nixon is certainly not a great example of consistency. But look, he has. He has never had the nerve to attempt to ask for a redistribution of your wealth. He has never asked for power. Observe that he is a man who is singularly not a power luster. That's not what power has he asked for.

Wait a minute. Wait a minute. Wait a minute. In answer to your question as to what power he has sought. The suggestion has come from an irritated spectator. Namely wage and price control.

Oh, certainly that is a vicious program. But that he wasn't asking for personal power. I mean a man who wants to control your personal life. I spoke about the wage and price.

Controls here a year ago.

I'm as opposed to it as I can be. But observe, he hasn't even enforce those controls, fortunately. I wouldn't think it's impossible that he will. But he is not doing it to seek personal power. If you look at one close up of McGovern, you know that that's what he's after. Because nobody, Nobody can advocate. Advocate the right to prescribe. How much money are men entitled to make and then grab everything else. That proposal of 12,000 a year is a monstrous proposal. It is really worse than communism.

Why, I will refer you to articles.

I wrote on that subject in the Ayn Randletter. I can't make a long lecture of it now, but it is an unspeakable proposal. Which he then very quickly had to, of course, retract.

But to answer, to finish your question.

The only way you can really judge today's hypocrites Is look not at the.

Details but at their basic principles.

What kind of fundamental.

That is a principle affecting a great part of your life and of the country.

What Hypocrisy keeps sticking to consistently and judge him by that. Nixon is not much and I'm not endorsing him enthusiastically. What I'm endorsing is individual rights.

And when you smell a collectivist, then.

You have to fight for your life. And McGovern is certain. Is that that putting it mildly.

Are your plays ideal and Think twice available in print? If so, where can I get.

Are your plays ideal and Think twice available? And if not, why not?

And if so, where available in print? No.

Why not? Because someday I might see them produced. That's not a promise. But it might.

Wait a minute.

No, I say it's not a promise.

I don't know, but it might happen.

Will you tell us about. About the progress of the film production?

I'm sorry, I cannot.

Atlas Shrug.

No contract has yet been signed.

That is all I can say at present.

No, no. This lady right there.

Come on. Not a by any means. There's trouble. Come on.

May have quiet, please.

In your open letter to Forest Capacity you said that games are an important part of man's life, as they provide necessary reference for the school work. He also said that a man who plays chess of succession uses his absence gay formality. In this case is that it is not a life oriented and appropriate profession for Descartes A. Is that true? And how can efforts will be applied to the court episode it reports professional?

I have the question, believe it or not. Now you listen and see whether I have it. If I haven't got it, raise your hand. But this lady suggests that in one of the articles you wrote for your fortnightly, you had an open letter to Boris Spassy in which you explained express the opinion that the enthusiasm about chess was really in some ways an escape from reality. And. Well, that's why it went to Boris Spassky. Because going into chess as a profession was an escape from reality. And the lady asks whether or not this can consistently be applied to all other sports. Where a person goes into sport as a profession. Would this be your opinion that they too are seeking to escape from reality?

No.

And I touched on that, though briefly.

In the article you quote, you see.

If men become professional sportsmen, it improves their skill in the particular respect which is involved.

Like if a man is a champion.

Runner, that means that in non sports life he runs well.

And then what he wants to use that ability for, it's up to him.

There's not an escape to be a champion sportsman. But the peculiar paradox in chess is that the man which is supposed to.

Be an intellectual sport that the men.

Who go into it professionally destroys their intellectual capacity for intellectual understanding of any other field. Now, I don't mean that it's necessarily so in every case, but in most.

Cases the man who.

Who are brilliant intellectually at chess are.

Naive, helpless and mystical in other realms of life.

In other words, they concentrate their intellect on one particular activity and do not which activity doesn't develop their capacity intellectually.

For the rest of their existence? It does the opposite.

It confines. Now, I not saying it necessarily has.

To do so, but in such cases as we know of, it seems to.

Be the choice of those who go.

Into professional chess player as to just playing the game as a relaxation. Nothing wrong with it. Nothing wrong with it.

If you are a professional, if you.

Use the same amount, or at least half, if you're not interested of your intellect on other issues of life, but not behave like Bobby Fischer.

I admire him tremendously. I happened to see him on tv. I was startled by the enormous intelligence.

He projected, which makes it more tragic.

Because a man with that ability shouldn't.

Be running around with, well, not Russia, he hates Russia, but Yugoslavia and all the other countries. He doesn't care.

And he belongs to some mystical sect.

For a man of his brain, that's not innocent, you see, that obviously is an escape. And that's what I objected in the case of all those potentially very brilliant minds.

Further questions.

Come on, this gentleman. Come on.

The question ends as to whom you contemplated to act in a picture of Atlas Shrugged.

The answer is I didn't.

Thank you. I thought it would be yes.